Crooked Timber: Studies in Film and Music

Joe Dolce is an Italian-American- Australian, born in Painesville, Ohio. He emigrated to Australia in 1979. He is known internationally for writing and performing the most successful song in Australian music history, "Shaddap You Face", which has been translated into fifteen languages, including the Western Australian aboriginal dialect of Yindjibarndi.

He has been a prolific poet and writer for the past two decades and was Quadrant magazine's film review editor for eight years. He was included in Best Australian Poems 2014 & 2015, winner of the 2017 University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize and a 2021 City of Melbourne Poet Laureate. He is a winner of the 25th Launceston Tasmania Poetry Cup and a recipient of Advance Australia Award.

He lives in Carlton, Victoria.

Have a look at some of [these] essays and you'll notice his knowledge spans a breadth inconceivable for most people.'

-Dr Naomi Stekelenburg

'That piece you wrote on Westerns [Yellowstone]... was on a level with the strongest papers I have heard at academic conferences, and I do include overseas scholars. This is no exaggeration.'

- Dr Christopher Heathcote

ATEGORY HERE

'Along with the rest of the world, I first heard Joe Dolce's song, "Shaddap You Face", many times and delighted in Joe's vivid performance. Sometime after, I realised that the Joe Dolce who wrote entertaining and informative articles in Quadrant magazine was, astonishingly, the writer and singer of a song that was a No. 1 hit in 15 countries. Re-reading dozens of Joe Dolce's witty and informative articles has tied me up for weeks (this was NOT an ordeal) while preparing this introduction to Crooked Timber. He has won numerous prizes for his verse, and his latest collection, At the Noisy Cafe Selected Poems 2017-2023, contains some of the most touching poems - including the title poem - that I have ever read. I look forward to more songs, more stories, more essays, more reviews, more poems, and more recipes from the energetic, charismatic Joe Dolce.'

- from the introduction by Academy Award winning film director, Bruce Beresford.